Actress’ email shows she wanted sex after alleged assault

As the cross-examination of actress Lucy DeCoutere continued on the fourth day of Jian Ghomeshi’s sexual assault trial, lawyer Gillian Hnatiw had an important reminder for all of us.

She alleges the former star CBC host choked and slapped her while they were kissing at his Toronto home in June 2003.

“I would go out of my way to be friendly to someone who is a bully”, she said of her personality.

The Ghomeshi trial is set to resume at the courthouse this morning.

“That doesn’t change the fact that he assaulted me and I never gave consent to him”, she said.

The actress is one of three women whose complaints prompted five charges against Ghomeshi: four counts of sexual assault and one count of overcoming resistance by choking. He pleaded not guilty.

Ghomeshi said he had consensual “rough sex” with women.

A copy of a photograph of Lucy DeCoutere released by the court during the trial of Jian Ghomeshi on February 5, 2016.

Ms. Henein asked Lucy Decoutere why she had not talked to the police that she exchanged some emails with Mr. Ghomeshi after the alleged assault, noting that she had spoken to the Crown on Thursday after the first woman to testify had itself faced the emails she sent the accused to 18 months after the alleged assault. “It was just instinct, I just didn’t want to see anybody get hurt”, said Miller, a former bouncer.

The actress says she feels bad reading that email now, because it sounds as though she was propositioning him – but she says she wasn’t.

“What happened was no sexual assault”, she said incredulously.

“DeCoutere also testified about subsequent interactions with Ghomeshi – including another encounter in Banff a year later, when he abruptly joined her in a karaoke session of “(Hit me) Baby One More Time”.

“Tonight.” And days later, in a handwritten “love letter” to Ghomeshi, she wrote “I love your hands”.

“Regardless, Mr. Ghomeshi choked me with no consent because he never asked for it. He slapped me with no consent because he never asked for it”, she reaffirmed.

Of the other emails DeCoutere said she remembers sending now that she’s reading them, she insisted she had no sexual interest in Ghomeshi.

“Violence against women is not about the behaviour of the woman, it is not about how they cope with the assault or the details they commit to memory in the aftermath”.

An image she sent to Ghomeshi in October 2005 of her performing fellatio on a beer bottle, is something DeCoutere said was simply meant to be amusing.

Henein has been blamed of “whacking” the alleged victims confessing at the trial – legal slang that refers to aggressive questioning some say prevents abuse victims from coming forward in the future. It said: “I love your hands, Lucy”.

When Henein suggested that DeCoutere was trying to see Ghomeshi, rather than him trying to see her, DeCoutere says she was attempting to make things less awkward between them. Now she says she’s revealed new details as recently as Thursday.

The intense moments came during the actress’s second day on the witness stand as Henein noted that DeCoutere has repeatedly said – both on the witness stand and to police – that she had no romantic interest in Ghomeshi.